From: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com (roc-digest) To: roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: roc-digest V2 #255 Reply-To: roc-digest Sender: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk roc-digest Monday, July 12 1999 Volume 02 : Number 255 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Jul 99 21:51:49 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Heads Up #143 (2/3) (fwd) On Jul 10, Doug Fiedor wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] learn to diagram a sentence (yuk!), that order included everyone in the large class, including those who had only been in the country six months to a year. To not do it correctly was to fail the class. No exceptions were made. The correction, back then, was called summer school. So, this year, it's no real surprise that more immigrant parents than expected are choosing to keep their children in English-only classes rather than exploit a silly loophole in the California law that would let them put their kids back in bilingual classes. In fact, when asked, fewer than 10 percent of parents in Los Angeles who were eligible to do so under the loophole wanted their kids back in bilingual classes. Another interesting development also occurred: The new law included $50 million a year funding for adult English classes and they too have become extremely popular with parents. However, there are always nay-sayers around. These seem to be located around the socialist capitol of San Francisco. San Francisco and a couple other districts skirted the law and refused to disband bilingual classes. Apparently, those school districts cannot deal with success. Now comes the people of Arizona. The silly bilingual education movement originated in Arizona back in the 1960s. And, although the State sinks $70 million into the program annually, legislators say bilingual instruction works for only 7% of students. So, Arizona legislators are fed up with the failures of bilingual education and are considering bills to reform it. The chairman of the State Senate's education committee calls it "mass-production criminality." "On average, you have a baby-sitting exercise taking place," said Republican state Sen. John Huppenthal. For instance, the Tucson school district has 12,000 students in bilingual classrooms. Yet, only 3.2% of them learned enough English last year to be reclassified as fluent and moved into mainstream classes. The people of Arizona figured out that bilingual education is little more than a big, feel-good liberal scam. A petition drive, started by a teacher, is underway for a referendum to abolish bilingual education altogether. Hector Ayala, a high school English teacher in Tucson, started the statewide campaign called "English for the Children." Modeled after California's successful Proposition 227, the Arizona movement hopes to abolish bilingual education in November 2000. "Mexican students are dropping out at over twice the rate of Anglos," Ayala said. "They're generally reading at a third-grade level [in high school]." State Senator Joe Eddie Lopez (D), a former union organizer and one-time aide to U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, wants to salvage bilingual education and keep the children ignorant. He's still floating that old "throw more money at the problem" liberal canard. Among other things, Lopez wants more money to hire skilled bilingual teachers and to monitor the progress of bilingual students. He is also demanding $2,000 raises for bilingual teachers. Rewarding failure seems to be the liberal way. All business of all governments and branches of governments in the United States should be conducted exclusively in English. Furthermore, a working knowledge of English should be a requirement for everything from citizenship to driving a vehicle. Other languages should be taught in government schools, but core curriculum classes should always be taught only in English. That is our American way. The immigrants of old conformed. The new ones can, too. BAD SCHEDULING CAUSES ERRORS In 1997, Mitler, Merrill, et al conducted a federally mandated study of sleep deprivation in long haul truck drivers (New England Journal of Medicine, 1997, 337: 755-761). They, of course, found that sleep deprivation in association with demanding work schedules is an important public safety concern. And, they concluded that: "Sleep- deprivation to a degree that is known to impair performance did occur, suggesting that sleep deprivation could be a contributory factor in accidents involving long-haul truck drivers." Nothing striking about that at all. Tired people often make a lot more mistakes than rested people. And, those commercially driving large trucks, buses, trains, and aircraft should be well rested. A glaring little secret is, they often are not. In fact, sometimes they are actually sleeping while working. For instance, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) nearly 75% of all aircraft accidents are do to pilot error. That is probably stretching it some, but let's go with that, anyway. When a commercial airline pilot flies less than 8 hours in a 24 hour period, FAA mandates that they must get at least 8 hours "rest." If a commercial airline pilot flies 9 or more hours in a 24 hour period, FAA requires they get 11 hours "rest" each 24 hour period. That sounds good on paper, but there are a few problems with it in practice. Many of today's commercial airline pilots are scheduled in such a way that they may get very little "rest" at times. That is, they can be called at home after something less that a full night's sleep and told to report within 90 minutes. Therein, they fly an hour or two to wherever, let passengers out and pick up new ones and immediately take off for another destination. From that other destination, they would make yet another quick turn- around and go to a third destination, where they could have some down time. So, total "flying" time may be just under 8 hours, but they have actually been working anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. But, according to FAA rules, they only need 8 hours of "rest." And, now is when things start to get interesting. "Rest," in pilot lingo, means any time out of the aircraft. That is, the schedule could put them back at the aircraft again in 8 hours. So, it would take our pilot approximately 30 minutes to get to the hotel, some time to eat and whatnot, then sleep fast for five or six hours, and report to reverse the whole schedule. Schedules similar to this are very common for many commercial pilots. Sometimes, actually, they get worse. And, remember, the 20 minutes or so it takes to "check out" the aircraft and go through the pre-flight check list is technically part of the "rest" the pilot gets from flying. Sleeping while working, therefore, is not all that uncommon. One of the war stories related while interviewing pilots was from a young man who admitted he dozed off for about 30 minutes while in the air. His big surprise was that the fellow sitting next to him was also sleeping. The aircraft was doing its thing on autopilot. Another captain told of the second officer preparing to land after a long day. Autopilot was off at the time and the captain was going over his checklist. The captain looked up to see they were significantly off course for their approach to the runway and yelled to the copilot to correct. "Oh (expletive deleted)!" the copilot said. "I must have been sleeping." It's not unheard of for pilots to be so tired they do not properly go through their landing check lists. One pilot actually forgot to put the wheels down on a [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Jul 99 21:50:40 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Heads Up #143 (3/3) (fwd) On Jul 10, Doug Fiedor wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] sizable commercial passenger aircraft. Some of the information can be found at http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/Pub_list.htm Other problems are noted at http://olias.arc.nasa.gov/ASRS/callback.html The problem seems to be two fold: First, the schedules of many pilots are so tight they do not always get the rest they need and deserve to function optimally. Second, a number of pilots do not get proper nutrition while flying. Nor do they always get the time to actually sit down and eat something, like normal people. Which brings us to an important point that needs to be studied (hint) by a good medical research group -- easy research. What is the safety implication when you mix both sleep deprivation and hypoglycemia in a working commercial airline pilot? Long-haul truck drivers must adhere to a strict rest schedule and are hassled by authorities from coast to coast to insure that they do. So, why are things different for commercial airline pilots? Perhaps those frequent flyers on Capitol Hill might be interested in investigating this sleep deprivation problem in professional airline pilots. FAA doesn't seem to care. MEDICAL SAVINGS ACCOUNTS MEAN FREEDOM Due to (government says) rising drug prices, reduced competition in the health care field because of consolidations, and insurers playing catch-up after initially setting low rates to gain market share, analysts expect workers' health-care premiums to rise by 7 to 11 percent for large companies this year and in 2000. Worse yet, premiums for midsize firms may rise as much as 20 percent this year. It also seems that, as costs rise, so does consumers' dissatisfaction with the medical care delivery system, especially with those operating the insurance companies. For instance, at least 29 percent were said to be discouraged by the complex referral rules in point-of- service plans. And it's true, freedom of choice in medical care is quickly diminishing. Insurance company clerks are directing the treatment plan, or so it seems to many. Further compounding the cost problems is the fact that, for more than 30 years, states have been passing legislation that forces insurers to cover health care providers such as chiropractors and podiatrists, and services such as drug and alcohol abuse. Back in 1968 there were only five such mandates, by the end of last year there were 1,260 to worry about. Most "experts" in the health care industry readily admit that the primary reason health care costs are rising is government interference. And it stands to reason that the greater the number of services mandated, the greater the costs. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) recently introduced "The Patients' Health Care Choice Act of 1999" (H.R. 1687), that includes a number of proposals designed to improve access to health insurance. The bill addresses the inequities created by the different tax treatment afforded employer-paid health benefits -- which are fully tax deductible for both employer and employee -- and health insurance purchased by the unemployed or individuals who work for small businesses, who must pay with after tax dollars. The bill tries to correct problems caused by government mandates by giving everyone a tax break for health care expenditures. But there's a better way. Everyone in government knows it. But many politicians are afraid to implement it because they will then lose some control over the lives of the American people. Last May, 43 Senate Republicans wrote Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) recommending corrections in Medical Savings Account legislation. This program was started for a measly four years and limited to just a few thousand people. The four-year MSA pilot program is now in its third year and many people who were previously uninsured are signing up. Hundreds of thousands more would, too, if the federal government would just get out of the way. Presently, MSAs are only available to the self- employed and employees of firms with 50 or fewer workers. The Senators want to "allow" anyone to open an MSA, and permit both employees and employers -- rather than either one or the other as the law now stands -- to contribute to the accounts. They also want to make the MSA program permanent, which would encourage more insurers to enter the market. Another encouraging point is that the General Accounting Office estimated that some 37 percent of MSA participants were previously uninsured. The socialists in government hate the Medical Savings Account plan because it is very simple, effectively gives control back to the patient and those not requiring much medical treatment might actually profit from it. Here's why: Let's say that you have $4,000 per year for medical insurance. Under the MSA plan, this then becomes tax free money, exempt from income tax. A requirement of the plan is that you use half (or thereabouts) of that money to purchase a (catastrophic) health insurance plan with a $2,000 (or thereabouts) deductible. The other $2,000, then, goes into your personal medical savings account for whatever medical treatment you may need that year. A patient may save that money in an interest bearing account forever, tax free. Or, they may use part of what they have accumulated for anything they wish. But, if not used for medical treatment, it will be taxed at that person's normal income tax rate. Better yet, the patient picks the doctor, clinic or hospital they wish to hire for treatment. And, the patient can make any deal they wish for treatment. So, if Doctor XY down the road is giving good treatment at half the cost of Doctor ZA on the other side of town, go to whomsoever you wish -- and save the money. It's your money, after all. Medical Savings Accounts, or MSAs; they may not be for everyone, but it sure sounds like a good deal on this end. ~ End ~ [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jul 99 21:51:13 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Fw: Freedom - Competing views (2/2) (fwd) On Jul 11, Kevin McGehee wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] The ancients understood the conditions of liberty better than that.. Cicero quotes Cato as saying that the Roman constitution was superior to that of other states because it "was based upon the genius, not of one man, but many; it was founded, not in one generation, but in a long period of several centuries and many ages of men. For, said he, there never has lived a man possessed of so great a genius that nothing could escape him, nor could the combined powers of all men living at one time possibly make all the necessary provisions for the future without the aid of actual experience and the test of time." Neither republican Rome nor Athens (the two free nations of the ancient world) could thus serve as an example for the rationalists. For Descartes, the fountainhead of the rationalist tradition, it was indeed Sparta that provided the model; for her greatness "was due not to the preeminence of each of its laws in particular...but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to a single end." And it was Sparta which became the ideal of liberty for Rousseau as well as for Robespierre and Saint-Just and for most of the later advocates of "social" or totalitarian democracy..................... The first condition for such an intelligent use of reason in the ordering of human affairs is that we learn to understand what role it does in fact play and can play in the working of any society based on the cooperation of many separate minds. This means that, before we can try to remold society intelligently, we must understand its functioning; we must realize that , even when we believe that we understand it, we may be mistaken. What we must learn to understand is that human civilization has a life of its own, that all our efforts to improve things must operate within a working whole which we cannot entirely control, and the operation of whose forces we can hope merely, to facilitate and assist so far as we understand them. Our attitude ought to be similar to that of the physician toward a living organism: like him, we have to deal with a self-maintaining whole which is kept going by forces which we replace and which we must therefore use in all we try to achieve. What can be done to improve it must be done by working with these forces rather than against them. In all our endeavors at improvement we must always work inside this given whole, aim at piecemeal, rather than total, construction, and use at each stage the historical material at hand and improve the details step by step rather than attempt to redesign the whole. None of these conclusions are arguments against the use of reason, but only arguments against such uses as require any exclusive and coercive powers of government; not arguments against experimentation, but arguments against all exclusive, monopolistic power to experiment in a particular field97power which brooks no alternative and which lays a claim to the possession of superior wisdom97and against the consequent preclusion of solutions better than the ones to which those in power have committed themselves.' From: `Keeping the Tablets, Modern American Conservative Thought' Edited by William F. Buckley, Jr. and Charles R. Kesler A DIGRESSION ON LIBERTY By Kevin McGehee It does not surprise me that, as the article points out, "What we have called the `British Tradition' was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson..." In my genealogical pursuits I've learned a little about how it came to be that William "Braveheart" Wallace's battle cry was "Freedom" rather than, say, "Scotland", or "Independence". Although by Wallace's day Scotland had essentially become two countries, Highland and Lowland, under a single Scottish crown (however much that crown might already have been mortgaged to the English, but that's another story), previously the realm had been - -- well -- two countries, Scottish and Pictish, under a single Scottish crown. The later Highland culture was the direct descendant of the melded Scottish-Pictish nation of Kenneth MacAlpin, Duncan, Macbeth, and so on, while the Lowlanders of Wallace's day were a mixture of English and Norman as well as Scottish, and the feudal system brought by the Normans held sway there. I don't know to what degree the pre-feudal clan system may have been from the ancient Picts as opposed to the medieval Celtic Scots who arrived from north Ireland, but similar structures certainly can be seen in early Irish history, suggesting this was a Celtic form. What the clan system meant to the pre-feudal Scots and the later Highlanders was a profound decentralization of authority. Before the introduction of feudalism, the King of Scots was regarded as the *Ard Righ,* or High King, while the heads of certain clans were lesser kings. Any clan chief could claim the right to an audience with the High King, just as any clan member could claim, by right, the respectful attention of his chief. In fact, the High King was considered the Chief of Chiefs, so that the relationships have a direct correspondence. This looks very much like our own federal system, in some ways. Feudalism involved a much more rigid hierarchical arrangement, with a commoner having no rights whatsoever against his lord, and being valued only for what he contributed to his lord's wealth and power. Replace the lord with the bureaucracy of Continental socialism, and wealth and power for such a bureaucracy's "enlightened" program, and the descent isn't hard to make out. Clearly, the tradition that the Celtic Scots brought to northern Britain during the Middle Ages was closer to the traditions of liberty that have now become known as the British model, than is that of feudalism (which, by coincidence I'm sure, was brought by Normans from -- ahem -- France). Perhaps the last gasp of pre-feudalism in Scotland came in Wallace's day, but clearly his idea of freedom didn't die with him at the hands of the then-feudal English. If, as the recent movie suggests, Wallace inspired the Norman-descended Robert Bruce to continue the fight for Scottish independence (a fight Scotland lost only when England submitted to a Scottish king, not the other way around), it seems reasonable that it became embodied in the Scottish soul, both Highland and Lowland, so that men like Hume, Smith and Ferguson could put it into words. After all, the bloodshed pertaining to the Scottish Reformation during the 1600s was a result of the Lowland Scots' resistance to having an English-style hierarchical system imposed upon their church. This after centuries of feudalism. Other cultures may have contributed to this thread of history -- not least the Picts, but also perhaps the other peoples, Angles, Saxons, etc., who settled in Britain after the Celts had been established there -- but the Celts deserve a big part of the credit. Kevin McGehee Fairbanks/North Pole, AK mcg5"@mcgeheezone.com http://www.mcgeheezone.com/ [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jul 99 21:53:05 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Fw: Freedom - Competing views (1/2) (fwd) On Jul 11, Kevin McGehee wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] A slight digression follows. -KM - ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Williams To: Amelu Sent: Sunday, July 11, 1999 11:36 AM Subject: Freedom - Competing views Freedom Competing views Though freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization, it did not arise from design. The institutions of freedom, like everything freedom has created, were not established because people foresaw the benefits they would bring. But once its advantages were recognized, men began to perfect and extend the reign of freedom and , for that purpose, liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty, the second did not. As a result, we have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty: one empirical and unsystematic, the other speculative and rationalistic, the first based on an interpretation of traditions and institutions which had spontaneously grown up and were but imperfectly understood, the second aiming at the construction of a utopia, which has often been tried but never successfully. Nevertheless, it has been the rationalist, plausible, and apparently logical argument of the French tradition, with its flattering assumptions about the unlimited powers of human reason, that has progressively gained influence, while the less articulate and less explicit tradition of English freedom hasbeen on the decline. This distinction is obscured by the facts that what we have called the French tradition of liberty arose largely from an attempt to interpret British institutions and that the conceptions which other countries formed of British institutions were based mainly on their description by French writers. The two traditions became finally confused when they merged in the liberal movement of the nineteenth century and when even leading British liberals drew as much on the French as on the British tradition. It was, in the end, the victory of the Benthamite Philosophical Radicals over the Whigs in England that concealed the fundamental difference which in more recent years has reappeared as the conflict between liberal democracy and `social' or totalitarian democracy. This difference was better understood a hundred years ago than it is today. In the year of the European revolutions in which the two traditions merged, the contrast between `Anglican' and `Gallican' liberty was still clearly described by an eminent German-American political philosopher. `Gallican Liberty' wrote Francis Lieber in 1848, `is sought in the government, and according to an Anglican point of view, it is looked for in a wrong place, where it cannot be found. Necessary consequences of the Gallican view are, that the French look for the highest degree of political civilization in organization, that is, in the highest degree of interference by public power. The question whether this interference be despotism or liberty is decided solely by the fact who interferes, and for the benefit of which class the interference takes place, while according to the Anglican view this interference would always be either absolutism or aristocracy, and the present dictatorship of the ouvriers would appear to us an uncompromising aristocracy of the ouvriers. Since this was written, the French tradition has everywhere progressively displaced the English. To disentangle the two traditions it is necessary to look at the relatively pure forms in which they appeared in the eighteenth century. What we have called the `British Tradition' was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson, seconded by their English contemporaries, Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, and William Paley, and drawing largely on a tradition rooted in the jurisprudence of the common law. Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism; the Encyclopedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Condorcet, are their best-known representatives. Of course, the division does not fully coincide with national boundaries. Frenchmen like Montesquieu and later, Benjamin Constant and, above all, Alexis de Tocqueville are probably nearer to what we have called the British then to the French tradition. And, in Thomas Hobbes, Britain has provided at least one of the founders of the rationalist tradition, not to speak of the whole generation of enthusiasts for the French Revolution, like Godwin, Priestly, Price, and Paine, who (like Jefferson after his stay in France) belong entirely to it. Though these two groups are now commonly lumped together as the ancestors of modern liberalism, there is hardly a greater contrast imaginable than that between their respective conceptions of the evolution and functioning of a social order and the role played in it by liberty. The difference is directly traceable to the predominance of an essentially empiricist view of the world in England and a rationalist approach in France. The main contrast in the practical conclusions to which these approaches led has recently been well put, as follows: " One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose", and one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberateness; one for trial and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern. It is the second view, as J.S. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy. The sweeping success of the political doctrines that stem from the French tradition is probably due to their great appeal to human pride and ambition. But we must not forget that the political conclusions of the two schools derive from different conceptions of how society works. In this respect the British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the rationalist school was simply and completely wrong. Those British philosophers have given us an interpretation of the growth of civilization that is still the indispensable foundation of the argument for liberty. They find the origin of institutions, not in contrivance or design, but in the survival of the successful. Their view is expressed in terms of "how nations stumble upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action but not the execution of human design." It stresses that what we call political order is much less the product of our ordering intelligence than is commonly imagined. As their immediate successors saw it, What Adam Smith and his contemporaries did was "to resolve almost all that has been ascribed to positive institution into the spontaneous and irresistible development of certain obvious principles97and to show with how little contrivance or political wisdom the most complicated and apparently artificial schemes of policy might have been erected. This "antirationalistic insight into historical happenings that Adam Smith shares with Hume, Adam Ferguson, and others" enabled them for the first time to comprehend how institutions and morals, language and law, have evolved by a process of cumulative growth and that it is only with and within this framework that human reason has grown and can successfully operate. Their argument is directed throughout against the Cartesian conception of an independently and antecedently existing human reason that invented these institutions and against the conception that civil society was formed by some wise original legislator or an original "social contract". The latter idea of intelligent men coming together for deliberation about how to make the world anew is perhaps the most characteristic outcome of those design theories. It found its perfect expression when the leading theorist of the French Revolution, Abbe Sieyes, exhorted the revolutionary assembly "to act like men just emerging from the state of nature and coming together for the purpose of signing a social contract." [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jul 99 13:24:59 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Fwd: http://www.wral-tv.com/homepage-high.shtml (fwd) On Jul 12, Mike Copeland wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] Please vote, I'm sick of these too, but we need to keep the pressure on. - -Mike > WRAL TV Flash Poll > > http://www.wral-tv.com/homepage-high.shtml > > Should gun ownership be more strictly regulated? > > at 12:30 PM > 61 % yes > 38 % no > > total votes 762 [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jul 99 17:56:31 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Fw: What is 'The West'? (1/2) (fwd) On Jul 12, Kevin McGehee wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] - ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Williams To: Amelu Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 11:13 AM Subject: What is 'The West'? What is 'The West'? By Mackubin Thomas Owens A review of David Gress, From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents (New York: Free Press, 1998), 610 pp., $28. `The West,' as we all know, won the Cold War. Many have attributed this triumph not to the West's military superiority over the Soviet Union, but to the strength of its institutions, i.e. liberal democracy and capitalism. When the Berlin Wall fell, optimists concluded that the West, having emerged victorious from the twilight struggle with communism, would see its `values' expand over the face of the globe. As Francis Fukuyama wrote in his 1991 essay (later expanded into a book) `The End of History?' only by accommodating the ways of the West could the rest of the world extricate itself from the `mire' of history. Fukuyama's essay called forth a number of responses, most notably Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's vision of a coming `clash of civilizations.' Huntington especially objected to Fukuyama's suggestion that with the collapse of the last ideological rival to liberal democracy, Western values would be universally accepted throughout the world at large. For Huntington, the West is only one of eight civilizations or cultures, raising the possibility that far from declining in the future, conflict would take on a cultural aspect. Indeed, an implication of Huntington's thesis is that the future could manifest itself as the `West against the rest.' All of this, of course begs the question: what, exactly, is the West? David Gress sets out to answer this question in his provocative new book, From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents. Mr. Gress observes that when most people talk about the West, they have in mind democracy and free markets. Based on this understanding, defenders of the West argue that the in the future, societies and cultures will converge toward a beneficent democratic and capitalist norm. Detractors define the West by the same qualities, but denounce it as the legacy of Eurocentrism: exploitative, patriarchal, and racist_an evil culture that deserves no future and is destined to be replaced by multiculturalism and feminism. The problem, says Mr. Gress, is that this understanding of the West is superficial and therefore incorrect. It is not enough to know that the West is democratic and capitalist, Mr. Gress claims. These features are manifestations of an underlying, paradoxical, and unique civilizational identity. To truly understand the West one must know how democracy and capitalism emerged and why. Accordingly, he sets out to retrieve the more complex meaning of the West as it evolved over two millennia. According to Mr. Gress, the West most Americans have encountered is the one presented in college `Western Civilization' courses. These courses arose in the aftermath of World War I as a way of providing a liberal education for returning soldiers and for assimilating immigrants. Dubbed the `Grand Narrative' by Mr. Gress, the story told by these courses presented the West as the seamless progress of liberty and individual rights from their origins in Periclean Athens to their culmination in liberal American democracy. Versions of the Grand Narrative were advanced by such educators as John Herman Randall of Columbia and Mortimer Adler and Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago. Will Durant popularized a variation of the Grand Narrative for three generations of interested citizens with his multi-volume The Story of Civilization. For a half century, the Grand Narrative succeeded in assimilating students and citizens into a single cultural tradition. These generations included those who fought World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. But in the 1960s, the West of the Grand Narrative came under attack, first from radicals who accused it of elitism, and later from multiculturalists who demonized it as, `of all civilizations, uniquely rapacious, racist, sexist, exploitative, environmentally destructive, and hostile to all human dignity. It was unredeemable. Only if the West went down to destruction could the rest of the human race hope to survive.' Mr. Gress's provocative thesis is that the critics of the Grand Narrative were right but for the wrong reason: the Grand Narrative was inadequate not because it was exclusive, chauvinistic, or politically incorrect, but `because it defined the West as modernity and its core, liberty, as an abstract principle derived from the Greeks and transported, outside time, to its modern resurrection in the Enlightenment and in twentieth-century liberal American democracy.' According to the author, the Grand Narrative described an ahistorical West of progress and morality that, `torn from its moorings in religion and in the actual practice of imperfect liberties, proved defenseless when called on its faults.' The moral relativism and political correctness pilloried by the late Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind were particularly egregious manifestations of this defenselessness. Mr. Gress seeks to redefine the real West in terms of certain critical conflicts and interactions: Greece with Rome; both with Christianity; and all three with the concept of `heroic freedom' imported by the Germanic tribes that settled in parts of the former Roman Empire. In thus redefining the West, he repudiates four staples of the Grand Narrative. Undoubtedly, Mr. Gress's most controversial claim is that the West did not begin with the Greeks. The real West, he contends, began in the fourth century when the Roman Empire was Christianized. The character of the West was essentially established by the eleventh century, culminating in the medieval synthesis of Christianity and classical Greek and Germanic culture. In other words, Greek philosophy and political ideas were grafted on to an already existing Christian West. This synthesis Mr. Gress calls the `Old West.' Second, Mr. Gress argues that liberty emerged from this synthesis not as a result of planning and foresight but by accident. The balance of power in Europe prevented the rise of a permanent empire, and political liberty began to emerge where rulers could not exercise total control. Mr. Gress argues that it was in these `niches of freedom' that partial forms of liberty were established, providing incentives for people to work, save, and invest without fear of expropriation. Over time, these factors gave rise to the `New West,' the synthesis of political liberty, property rights, and economic development. Third, although it is the New West of democracy, capitalism, and science _not the Old West of Christian morality, Germanic heroic freedom, and classical Greek virtue_ that most people have in mind when they speak of the West today, Mr. Gress argues that the New West cannot survive if it does not maintain its connection with the Old. As the American Founders understood and even today's liberals have come to recognize, liberty without virtue is untenable in the long run. Finally, Mr. Gress rejects the claim that Western ideas are universal, i.e. appropriate for all the peoples of the world. On this issue he joins Samuel Huntington in rejecting Francis Fukuyama. If he means by Western ideas the `values' arising from the superficial West that he has just demolished he is, of course, correct. Moreover, as Allan Bloom also demonstrated, the attempt to universalize the `values' of the superficial West_capitalism and egalitarianism disconnected from morality and religion_actually undermines the West by unleashing multiculturalism and relativism. But if he means the universal principles that arise from the organic as opposed to the superficial West, he necessarily places himself at odds with the American Founders, who firmly believed that the principles informing the creation of the United States, as articulated in, e.g. the Declaration of Independence, applied potentially to all human beings. The Founders generally agreed that human beings have `natural ends' that are conducive to [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ End of roc-digest V2 #255 *************************